Time	Speaker
11:30	Lunch
12:30	Aaron Strauss ABD, Princeton University “Planning the Optimal Get-out-the-vote Campaign Using Randomized Field Experiments.” Presentation Slides Aaron Strauss is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University in the Politics Department. His American politics research focuses on electoral behavior and campaign strategy, while his work in political methodology includes Bayesian modeling and heterogeneous treatment effects. Aaron's dissertation develops a formal model of campaign microtargeting based on voters' personal experience with issues and presents both experimental and observational evidence for the theory. His work has appeared in AJPS and Political Analysis. Aaron's CV
1:30	Christopher Dawes ABD, University of California, San Diego “Cognitive Ability Mediates the Relationship Between the CHRM2 Gene and Turnout.” Presentation Slides Chris Dawes is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, San Diego where he studies American politics and political methodology. His research focuses on the genetic basis of political participation and whether the effect of genes on participation is mediated by personality traits and cognitive ability. His work also studies the relationship between altruistic, risk, and time preferences and political behavior. Chris has been published in the APSR, QJE, JOP, as well as general science journals like Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Christopher's CV
2:30	Andrea Astrid Abel Stanford University “Spatial Election Modeling using Information Filters.” Presentation Slides Andrea Abel is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Stanford University. Her research interests include International Political Economy, Democratic Transitions, and Quantitative Methodology. More specifically, her dissertation aims to look at the political consequences of foreign direct investment in East-Central Europe. Her methodological interests lie in the field of Bayesian Analysis.
3:30	Dino Christenson ABD, Ohio State University “Information and Advertising: Multivariate Matching with Campaign Exposure.” Presentation Slides Dino Pinterpe Christenson is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Ohio State University. He studies voting behavior and survey research methodology, with subsequent concentrations in bureaucracies and interest groups. Methodologically, he focuses on longitudinal data, Bayesian models and matching. His dissertation explores the relationship between information and campaign exposure in presidential voting behavior. Dino's CV
4:30	Erin Hartman ABD, University of California, Berkeley “Employing Matching to Alleviate Bias in Survey Data.” Presentation Slides Erin Hartman is a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, where she works with Jas Sekhon. She is substantively interested in information transmission through social networks and how this relates to voting behavior. Erin is also interested in quantitative methodology, especially as it pertains to making causal inferences using survey data. Erin's CV
5:30	Break
7:00	Dinner

Time	Speaker
8:00	Breakfast available
9:00	Alejandro Quiroz Flores ABD, New York University “Testing Copula Functions as a Method to Derive Bivariate Weibull Distributions.” Presentation Slides Alejandro Quiroz Flores is a PhD candidate at the Wilf Family Department of Politics, New York University. Alejandro specializes in international relations and methodology. His dissertation explores the relationship between political survival and cabinet reshuffles. In the area of methodology, Alejandro is interested in copula functions and the development of multivariate distributions, particularly those applicable to survival analysis. Alejandro's CV
10:00	Adam Ramey ABD, University of Rochester “Weighing the Alternatives: Parties, Preferences, and Constituency in the U.S. Congress.” Presentation Slides Adam Ramey is a 4th year ABD at the University of Rochester where he studies American politics, political methodology, and game theory. His research focuses on the study of American legislative institutions, with a particular focus on the U.S. Congress. Therein, he employs the use of statistical modeling to better evaluate the microfoundations of legislators' vote choices. Adam also has an interest in Lebanese politics, wherein he seeks to apply item response models to the study of voting behavior in the Lebanese Chamber of Deputies. Prior to coming to Rochester, he was an undergraduate at The George Washington University where he studied political science, physics, and linguistics. Outside of political science, Adam enjoys classical music, history, linguistics, philosophy, theology, political punditry, and cigars. Adam's CV
11:00	Julianna Pacheco ABD, Penn State University “Two New Measures of Dynamic Public Opinion in the States Using Item Response Theory.” Presentation Slides Julianna Pacheco is currently a doctoral candidate in Political Science at Penn State. Her current research seeks to develop dynamic measures of state public opinion for the fifty US states. Julie's previous research on the political behavior among young adults has been published in Political Behavior and American Politics Research. Her methodological interests focus on hierarchical linear modeling, survey research, and item response theory. Julie's CV
12:00	Justin Grimmer ABD, Harvard University “A Bayesian Hierarchical Topic Model for Political Texts: Measuring Expressed Agendas in Senate Press Releases.” Presentation Slides Justin Grimmer is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard University and attended Wabash College as an undergraduate, majoring in mathematics and political science. His research interests include political representation, Congress, and political methodology. Justin particularly interested in understanding how elected officials describe their work to their constituents and the consequences of this communication for political representation. To measure the content of explanations, he develops and applies statistical methods for political texts: his dissertation introduces statistical models for measuring the attention political actors allocate to issues in texts and a collaborative project develops the first general-purpose document clustering methodology. Justin is also involved in an ongoing collaboration analyzing formal models of bureaucratic regulation and decision-making. Justin's CV
1:00	Lunch